Portfolio of Doom
Okay, at the risk of sounding like a complainer, I have to tell you all that I really don't enjoy portfolio assignments. As with the group projects, I know I'm not alone in this. This may just be due to the fact that I recently had to complete a THIRD one...
I can understand the necessity and utility of such things for artists. I also understand the basic rationale behind a portfolio. And lord knows, as a former counseling major I can reflect on just about anything. Ask me to tell you my in-depth feelings on dryer lint and you'd get a coherent, if brief, response.
But really, people, talk about a drain of time and paper! If you don't know what you've been doing over the course of a semester, there is a problem. If you need a lengthy, repetitive assignment to remind you, then you probably didn't do very well in the first place. And if that's the case, why would you want to "showcase" that in a portfolio?!
I would estimate that my class alone probably took out a significant portion of the Amazon rainforest with our three portfolios each. That's 96 portfolios! At an average of 30 pages each, sometimes more...well, math is not my forte, but you get the idea!
And on the other side of things, instructors, do you REALLY want to sit there and "grade" these things? I can tell from the diligent scoring sheet that you are bored to tears because...guess what...you already read and/or taught everything in that portfolio! Also, what is there to grade when it's all subjective? Everything in there is my subjective thoughts and reflections, which aren't right or wrong, so how can you realistically grade that?
I can guarantee you that with so many students and so many pages, these portfolios don't get read beyond a glance or a skim to make sure they were actually completed. So we spend entire weeks putting these things together, making them beautiful and professional-looking, for someone to give it a passing glance and slap an arbitrary 98% on it.
Funny story. In my second portfolio, one item had to do with learning about various forms of assessment. So, I chose to include an assessment project we had completed for one professor, where literally 50 assessments were analyzed via a series of questions and compiled by our groups. So, this was a long, thorough document on nearly every psychosocial assessment tool under the sun. When I got the portfolio back, 10/10 was written for that particular section, then crossed out and rewritten as 8/10...and the comment said "Needs more detail." There's your arbitrary 98% and a healthy shot of irony.
Perhaps I should keep my sarcasm in check. I know what many of you will say: portfolios are valuable learning tools, you should do them for yourself, etc. etc. Perhaps if I was doing a portfolio of things I didn't already know or hadn't already completed, this would be the case. Not so, my friends. I'm pretty sure I'm operating at Allen Cognitive Level 6 (or 5 in my most sleep-deprived moments). With this in mind, please cut me a break and assume that I grasp what I am learning without the aid of end-of-semester busywork!
I know that complaints aren't constructive without the presentation of a possible solution, so here you go: 5 ways to make portfolios more useful and a more pleasant experience overall.
1. E-Portfolios. There's no reason to kill trees, waste ink from a $40 cartridge, or be saddled with a bulky binder.
2. Don't make it an assignment full of reiteration. Instead of proving we've met a competency, ask us to find an item that supports that competency, like a journal article, website, or product. That way, we actually learn something new and there will be some variety in what the instructor has to sit and look at (and the instructor might actually learn something new, also!)
3. Don't structure it so that a student HAS to wait until the end of the semester to start putting it together. Currently, students do have to wait until the last minute because they haven't accumulated enough "artifacts" until that time (and even then it doesn't feel like we have enough to choose from). Some of us would actually like to do it sooner - we aren't all procrastinators.
4. Make them pass/fail. You shouldn't be grading our subjective feelings and reflections because they can't be wrong. This will also encourage more honesty and better reflection.
5. For the love of all that is holy, do not make us present our portfolios in class. This may scientifically be the most boring thing possible (I'm propositioning the NIH for funding to study whether this is, in fact, true) and is comparable to Chinese Water Torture. Why? Well, first of all, it's supposed to be personal reflection and we might not want to share that. Secondly, 75% of the artifacts being presented are things I've already seen and done. I probably have the same exact thing, or something similar, in my portfolio. If there are more than eight people in the class, this "sharing" becomes incredibly monotonous and meaningless. Spare us! Or, if you really want us to talk about our portfolios, divide us into small groups of four or five and have us discuss them that way, for no more than 20 minutes. I don't mind hearing a few peoples' perspectives, but 30+ is too much and it ends up being a huge waste of time.
There - Andrea's complete portfolio overhaul. Embrace it if you dare. (Please?)